With the engine head away for inspection, I could ignore any thoughts about that for a while and finish off the shell. The first issue was I couldn’t lower the diff (still clinging onto the powerplant frame) through the rear subframe bracing. As it was so late into the dismantling process, I decided against unbolting it all and just cut a gap in one of the braces instead. Diff out, handbrake cables out and steering rack out. Finished!

In the meantime, the custom silicone hoses for the coolant re-route arrived. SFS turned them round in double quick time, from what should have been six weeks or so only took around a week. Big thanks go to Mark from WSCC here for organising it all and indeed going through the trouble of getting them designed and made up in the first place.

With the car on axle stands, and of course no hope in getting it mobile again, Jon came over and in true A-team fashion, we knocked up some highly technical mazda-mobilificators.

Some thought did go into it, in that the wheels are spaced apart so they’d be directly underneath the chassis rails. Some more thought should have gone into it because the rear subframe is lower than the chassis rails so the dollies had to go there. With the rear subframe also being thinner than the chassis rails, it didn’t have bend a bit! Still, all held at the shell was mobile once again.

I chucked any further bits of scrap metal I didn’t want into the car and booked a breakers to come and collect it. With the shell not being that heavy, I just booked the guys closest to me as I doubted by the time they’d got it there wasn’t that much money in it for them. Sure enough, they came out the same day.

Back in the daylight, ready to go

My mazda mobilificators were so good they snaffled one!

It kept facing back to the garage. No chance! I want my space back!

The final journey

So that sums up the strip down. Now I’ve got until Wednesday to tidy the garage back up ready for picking up the intro kit, plus a few bits to get it to rolling chassis stage.